


in the night hours

by tentaclemonster



Series: 100 Fandoms Challenge [37]
Category: The Alienist - Caleb Carr
Genre: 100 Fandoms Challenge, Closeted Character, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:14:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22192381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tentaclemonster/pseuds/tentaclemonster
Summary: Steffens has a story and Riis has concerns.
Relationships: Link Steffens/Jake Riis
Series: 100 Fandoms Challenge [37]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1257083
Kudos: 20
Collections: The 100 Multifandom Challenge





	in the night hours

**Author's Note:**

> 037/100 for the 100 Fandoms Challenge. Written for prompt #27 – fear. 
> 
> Takes place post-chapter 5.

When all was done and with little said save for the harsh grunts and quick pants that came out of Jake and he during the act – sounds which Link, personally, did not count as actual speech – Link laid on his back wrapped in the sweat soaked sheets of Jake’s bed, the back of his hand pressed to his forehead as he stared up at the ceiling and his heart continued to pound away as though it thought his body was still getting pounded quite similarly, and said in a voice that was still rather breathless, “But I really do think there’s a story there.”

At the foot of the bed, sitting with the large expanse of his bare back to Link, Jake let out a weary groan and lit a cigarette which he took an immediate drag from.

“There’s no story there,” Jake said through an exhale of smoke. His tone was less heated than it was earlier in the day – and no wonder, really, considering what they’d just finished; sex took the edge off the man like nothing else, except maybe a fist fight or a lead followed through on – but it still left little room for argument and the demand to drop the subject was plain to hear.

Link, of course, could always find room to argue with Riis and rarely took his demands – both blatantly stated or implied in an undercurrent – seriously. Winding the man up was half the fun, whether in the daylight hours where Jake’s anger at the mention of seamier subjects broke the monotony of the job and offered a little amusement or in the later ones when it only took a little to push to take the man from angry to acting, the sort of acting of which could only be done in a bed with nearly all the lights off so Riis could pretend Link was a woman or that society and all its rules about taking another man to bed didn’t exist or whatever it was the cover of darkness allowed Jake to do so that he could have Link well and good even though he’d likely faint from outrage if the subject of two men fucking was broached while the sun was up.

And after that act, too, it was certainly the best time to bring up such subjects that were so abhorrent to Riis during the day. Link didn’t know if the darkness, which was only illuminated the barest bit by a single small lamp on either bedside table and the burning end of a cigarette, made it easier for Riis to talk about these things or if it was just that spending himself took the edge off of his anger, but the end was still the same for Jake was more loquacious about these things and less prone to raising a fist over them only in the hour or so afterwards, and Link had found it best to raise those topics then if he wanted to have anything resembling a civil conversation about them.

Link often had idle thoughts about what Dr. Kreizler would make of all that and what expression of shock would form on the man’s face should Link tell him, if shock were even a thing Kreizler were capable of. These thoughts brought him almost as much amusement as winding Riis up did but, it need not be stated, they were not only idle thoughts but private ones as well. Link imagined that if he told Riis about them, he’d be in for a pummeling that no amount of post-coital relaxation could dissuade the man from and so Link – smartly – kept those musings to himself.

The musings he had about the potential story that was brewing under their very noses, however, he did not.

“If there was no story, then explain the rumors,” Link volleyed back at Riis. 

“There are always rumors,” Jake dismissed, “and despite what your friends at the  _ Post _ might believe, printing rumors doesn’t make them true.”

Link, rather valiantly in his opinion, chose to ignore that little dig. “Connor said--”

“Connor is full of shit.”

“Well, of course he’s full of shit, but he said that this Wolff fellow has killed another child and that at least confirms there is another child dead even if that’s not the way it ended up so –  _ not _ to mention that the way Kreizler reacted when I told him that Connor was saying so was not the reaction of a man who was very pleased about it, either. He looked ready to spit nails over it or hunt Connor down and box his ears.”

When Riis had nothing to say to that other than to take another drag of his smoke, Link pressed on, “And that gets us to why in God’s name Kreizler  _ and _ Moore would be meeting with Roosevelt over it. Tell me that doesn’t stink of a story to high heaven and I’ll put my mouth on your cock here and now.”

Jake made a choking noise and actually dropped his cigarette at  _ that _ offer which caused him to let out a mean curse and fumble to pick it up while at the same time roughly patting the bed to make sure he hadn’t accidentally set the sheets ablaze. “For fuck’s – you don’t know that this business with the – the --”

“Boy-whores,” Link provided.

Jake made another noise that made Link worry for his health and went on in a tight sort of tone, “-- you don’t know that  _ this business _ is why they were meeting.”

“Oh, I know,” Link said defiantly. “What else is there? And it has to be about more than just a single murder. Moore wouldn’t have been so tight-lipped about it if it was a one-off and this Wolff character did it and I doubt Kreizler would’ve had his back up over it so badly. There’s a  _ story _ there, Riis. No one is so secretive over nothing and especially not a group of men such as these.”

“Fine, maybe there’s a story,” Jake conceded as he put his cigarette out rather viciously in an ash tray and finally turned around to face Link at which point Link could see the furrow of his brows and the angry, drawn-down turn of his mouth. His post-coital bliss had, apparently, not lasted very long tonight to Link’s minute dissatisfaction. “But you think it’s a story you can publish? These rumors – Steffens, not even the  _ Post  _ would put such degeneracy on the front page.”

“You’re underestimating how much the average New Yorker secretly craves a little degeneracy in their life, Riis.” 

_ Including yourself _ , he very wisely did not add.

“The  _ Post _ ,” Link went on in a self-aggrandizing sort of way, “knows what sensationalizes people, what stories get them buying their papers day after day hoping to know a little more, and I’ll tell you Riis, it isn’t news about what opera is playing next month or what color dress is most in-fashion for the spring, it’s the stuff that turns their stomach and makes the anger crawl up their throat. All you need to do is look at how many articles have been written about Dr. Holmes and how even the most buttoned-up of society ladies are following the story avidly to tell that.  _ We _ would not be in business if people did not enjoy reading about degeneracy and were willing to pay us for the trouble of writing about it. Throw in figures such as Roosevelt and Kreizler and not only will the  _ Post _ publish this story, but I imagine that plenty of people will be all too glad to read about it if only to thank their lucky stars that this monstrosity is not happening to them or to  _ their _ children!”

Link was sitting up and fairly breathless by the time he finished his speech but if he were expecting any kind of grand reaction from Riis, he would be disappointed.

Jake sighed the sigh of a man on death row and lit another cigarette. He waved it at Link to gesture with, “And have you thought for a single minute what people might think of you for reporting it when no one else would?”

Link blinked at him. 

Jake smoked and stared pointedly back.

Link caught the point and let out a startled laugh. “You think that reporting about the murder of a boy-whore --” and at this term Riis let out a hiss as if stung “will make people think – what, about me, exactly?”

Jake continued to smoke silently and Link snorted at this. He flopped back down on the bed, grinning though he wasn’t sure whether what he felt quite qualified as amusement. It felt a little too raw at the edges for that, truthfully.

“I’ll be kind to you, Riis, and not point out where we are or what we were doing here not twenty minutes ago --”

“Thanks ever so,” Jake mumbled between puffs.

“--but I will not be so kind as to ignore the  _ insult _ you deal to my writing by implying that I can’t write an article about a boy-whore being murdered – oh for god’s sake, Riis, get over yourself – without, without making people think that I must be a homosexual for taking an interest in the story. No one thinks I’m a murderer or a rapist or a robber when I write about  _ those _ crimes, and –  _ oh _ , here’s a thought! If you really think people might assume such about me for writing about it, then what do you think people will say about the likes of Kreizler and Moore and Roosevelt for investigating? Perhaps people will think they’re homosexuals, too?”

Riis paused with his cigarette an inch from his lips. 

“Well,” he drawled, and then went silent in a way that was quite loaded with implication.

Implication that Link snorted at with perverse amusement. “It’s absurd---”

“ _ Well _ ,” Riis said, “not Roosevelt, surely, but---” 

“John Moore does not have the wherewithal to be a homosexual and Kreizler ---” Link paused himself at this, searching for a reason and then surprising himself when he struggled to find one. “Kreizler was married once, wasn’t he? Or engaged or something or the other?”

The explanation fell flat for Link even though he was the one to deliver it, for he knew personally from assignations he’d had with men prior to Jake’s singular occupation of his night hours that the presence of a wife or a fiance or even an unattached female lover did not necessarily lend to the exclusion of the presence of a man who took up a similar role in a fellow’s life. 

However this was something Link would not point out, no matter how the idea of Kreizler being of a certain persuasion might titillate him, because as much as discussing relations between those of the same sex might infuriate and gall Riis when the sun was up, the reality that Link had been with men prior to falling into bed with Riis himself was not a subject that Link cared to broach during any hour of the day or night. 

Galled as Jake might be over the topic of homosexuals in general, he had surprisingly turned out to be quite possessive over Link in particular. Sometimes Link could exploit such feelings to his own, quite pleasurable, advantage by needling Riis about how handsome this fellow he interviewed was or that one until the man was sent over the edge, but now did not seem the right time to do so.

And with handling Jake Riis, damn near everything was about the timing. 

“It doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not,” Riis was saying. “It matters what people will believe and, as you have so helpfully pointed out, people will believe anything they’re spoon-fed as long as long as it gives them a good titter with their  _ buttoned-up _ society sort and if they believe it about you, then it’s only a skip away from them believing it about whoever you’re associated with.”

It didn’t take more than a half a second’s thought for Link to realize that by  _ whoever you’re associated with _ , who Riis meant was Riis himself.

Neither of them had ever spoken about what it was they were doing in any particular specifics, Link not feeling the need to so long as it continued to be an enjoyable affair for all and Jake probably balking at even the idea of doing so for he would spontaneously combust if he tried, and neither Riis or Link had ever even referred to themselves  _ as _ homosexuals as Link did not particularly want to wear such a loaded label on his sleeve no matter how accurate it might be and he doubted Riis thought of himself in such a way at all, his nightly activities with Link notwithstanding, but it didn’t take any sort of conversation for the both of them to reach a mutual understanding that the secrecy of the nature of their relationship was of a certain importance and that – should that secrecy be broken – Riis had the most to lose.

His fear in that regard, Link thought, was entirely understandable but that didn’t stop Link from also thinking that this potential article about the murder was unlikely to produce the dreaded result in question and it was not only his hunger at the possibility of a good scoop that made him think so. Link had written any number of salacious articles about subjects that held their own sort of degeneracy over the years – much to the insult of Jake’s journalistic sensibilities, not to mention his moral ones – and the worst he’d ever been accused of was profiting from shining a light on depravity, a charge he could hardly deny seeing as it was true.

And, to his defense, he was not only blowing smoke at Riis when he said he could write  _ this _ article in such a way that no one would think he had any particular sort of stake in the concept of homosexuality in general. 

Link often wrote about things that were not strictly polite to speak of in a way that would most make the papers sell, but that did not mean that he lacked talent at writing – it only meant he was equally talented as a writer as he was a salesman. This was something he thought Riis, for all his bluster otherwise, understood for the man would never have taken Link under his wing in the first place if he thought Link had no talent as a journalist and – whatever feeling Riis might have about Link’s gender and whatever he might have to tell himself to compartmentalize the reality of their relationship with that of his moral sensibilities about such relationships between men – Link highly doubted Jake would’ve taken him to bed, either, if he thought Link a hack or, worse, an imbecile.

Link was also horribly aware that there was little he could say that would truly put Jake’s feelings, his fear of potential outing and persecution resulting from it, to rest completely. He could say that the idea of Jake Riis being a homosexual would be as foreign to anyone as the idea of Roosevelt being one was to Riis and that no one would ever take such an outlandish rumor seriously, but that would be too on the nose and require saying things that they – in their silent, mutual understanding – did not say to one another. He could also offer to drop the whole scoop and not write about the murder at all, but such a thing was antithetical to Link and he could not seriously imagine doing so for even an entire second. 

All Link  _ could _ think to do was to say, “I suppose you’ll just have to trust me when I say I know what I’m doing then, Riis. I can smell a big story here and I can’t just leave John Moore to have it all to himself. You understand that, don’t you?”

Riis sucked his cigarette, now burned almost to the filter, and sighed heavily as he pulled it out of his mouth and ground it down in the ash tray. 

“I suppose I’ll just have to, then,” he said flatly, and left it at that.

Something in Link’s chest loosened at the begrudging agreement which, truly, he shouldn’t have been surprised to have been given. Trust was something a relationship such as his and Jake’s could not exist without and the likes of the trust they shared wasn’t the kind of thing that came along every day.

Link took a steady breath of smoky air and promised himself that he would see that the trust he was given was not given foolishly. 

He also promised himself that he’d find a way to get the scoop on John Moore about all this business, as Riis so vaguely put it, if it was the last thing he did.


End file.
